Miseria da educacao no Brasil: perdas agora e para a frente

Leiam a matéria abaixo. Estarrecedora.
O Brasil, como já disse Roberto Campos, é um país que não perde a oportunidade de perder oportunidades.
Tudo isso era previsível e esperado. Há pelo menos 15 anos ouço falar da carência de professores de ciências (física, química) e de matemática para os cursos médios.
Os alunos simplesmente saem despreparados, razão da enorme evasão nesses cursos: eles não conseguem acompanhar.
E o pior é que estamos caminhando para o pior, justamente.
Com bobagens obrigatórias como as que foram introduzidas pelos companheiros -- espanhol e estudos afrobrasileiros no primário, filosofia e sociologia no curso médio -- a previsão é que continuemos a formar perfeitos analfabetos nas ciências elementares e nas matemáticas.
O Brasil perde, todos perdemos.
Acho que isso não se corrige facilmente. Daí meu enorme pessimismo educacional.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

País perde US$ 15 bi com má formação de engenheiro
Agnaldo Brito
Folha de S. Paulo, 21.06.2010

De 150 mil que entram em engenharia, 30 mil se formam

A baixa qualidade do ensino médio, sobretudo em disciplinas como física, química e matemática, tornou-se obstáculo para a formação de engenheiros no Brasil. Essa falha, agravada pela alta demanda gerada com o crescimento do país, tem custo -e não é pequeno.
Cálculos de entidades de engenharia mostram que o país perde US$ 15 bilhões (R$ 26,5 bilhões) por ano com falhas nos projetos das obras públicas. A cifra, equivalente a 1% do PIB, foi apresentada em encontro nacional de engenheiros, em Curitiba, na semana passada.
A reunião levou à capital do Paraná 850 engenheiros de todo o país com o único propósito: buscar meios de frear a crise sem precedentes da engenharia nacional.

GUERRA
A CNI (Confederação Nacional da Indústria) calcula que 150 mil vagas de engenheiros não terão como ser preenchidas até 2012. Tamanha demanda diante da falta de profissionais criou uma guerra por engenheiros.
Em 2003, a formação de um engenheiro custava US$ 25 mil. Hoje, US$ 40 mil, diz a IBM, uma das empresas que mais contrataram engenheiros e técnicos de computação desde quando o Brasil tornou-se base mundial para oferta de serviços.
Essa escassez já atinge a competitividade brasileira. Em 2009, exportamos US$ 1,5 bilhão em serviços. Só a IBM respondeu por US$ 500 milhões. A Índia exportou US$ 25 bilhões, disse Paulo Portela, vice-presidente de Serviços da IBM, em seminário promovido pela Amcham, em São Paulo.
Essa disputa por engenheiros não ajuda. Vamos perder se entrarmos numa guerra e ampliar a inflação dos custos da mão de obra. O salário inicial, de R$ 1.500 em 2006, já atinge R$ 4.500.

EVASÃO
O diagnóstico da realidade nos 1.374 cursos no país mostra que a evasão nos cursos de engenharia é de 80%; dos 150 mil que ingressam no primeiro ano, 30 mil se formam.
Só um 1 em cada 4 possui formação adequada. O Brasil forma menos de 10 mil engenheiros com competência e esses são disputados pelas empresas, diz José Roberto Cardoso, diretor da Escola Politécnica da USP, uma das mais importantes faculdades de engenharia do país.
A Amcham (Câmara Americana de Comércio) quer o tema na campanha eleitoral. O documento com o diagnóstico e as propostas compiladas por Jacques Marcovitch, professor da USP e conselheiro do Fórum Econômico Mundial, será entregue ao governo e aos candidatos.
É certo que ficará para o próximo governo a busca da resposta para a pergunta: Por que o jovem quer ser médico e advogado e não quer ser engenheiro e professor de matemática?.
Exemplo de baixa procura pela área ocorreu em concurso para professor de física em São Paulo. De 931 vagas, só 304 foram preenchidas.

7 a 0: minha recomendacao a certo time...

Bem, se fosse eu, e conhecendo os precedentes, trataria de pedir asilo coletivo.
A alternativa é o Gulag, de retorno ao lar (se o termo se aplica, claro).
Mas, isso deve ser feito agora, se possível ainda com a roupa molhada de suor.
Se esperarem muito, os gorilas habituais vão controlar todos os seus movimentos.
Sorry, boys, não dava mesmo para vencer essa.
Mas, a vergonha do score pode induzir um baixinho invocado a gestos inesperados (ou esperados e previsíveis...).
A escolha é de vocês...

The BRICs: The trillion-dollar club - The Economist

The BRICs
The trillion-dollar club
The Economist, April 15th 2010

Brazil, Russia, India and China matter individually. But does it make sense to treat the BRICs—or any other combination of emerging powers—as a block?

IN ANY global gathering, the American president is usually seen, at a minimum, as primus inter pares: the one who can make or break the final bargain and select his favoured interlocutors. So in Copenhagen last December, as negotiations for a new climate-change treaty were entering their final hours, a hastily convened meeting between Barack Obama and China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, looked as if it would be the critical moment when a deal might be struck. But when the president turned up, he found not only Mr Wen but the heads of government of Brazil, South Africa and India. This was unexpected. The Americans even thought the Indians had already left the summit. What was conceived as a bilateral talk turned instead into a negotiation with an emerging-market block. As an additional sign that things were changing in the world, the president got a finger-wagging from one of Mr Wen’s hangers-on. But at least Mr Obama was in the room; Europeans were shut out while the emerging powers and America put the final touches to their deal.

This week the same developing countries are meeting again, in Brasília. On April 15th Brazil, India and South Africa—rising powers that are also democracies—put their heads together. The next day South Africa will drop out and Russia and China will join the party, to create a meeting of the so-called BRICs.

For this group, it is a second summit; last June their leaders met in Yekaterinburg, in Russia. That inaugural summit, which produced almost nothing concrete, appeared to be a one-off event and could be ignored. But the foursome is starting to establish a record. BRIC foreign ministers have met annually since 2006. Finance ministers and central bank heads meet frequently. This week, in addition to the leaders’ summit, there are gatherings in Brazil of BRIC commercial banks, BRIC development banks, and even BRIC think-tanks.

The term itself was coined by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street bank, and is sometimes written off as just a gimmick aimed at tempting punters. But is it now the case that life, in a serious way, is imitating investment analysis? Are the BRICs developing a momentum of their own? If so, what difference might that make to the rest of the world?

Life imitates Goldman Sachs

The BRICs matter because of their economic weight. They are the four largest economies outside the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the rich man’s club). They are the only developing economies with annual GDPs of over $1 trillion (Indonesia’s is only half that). With the exception of Russia, they sustained better growth than most during the great recession and, but for them, world output would have fallen by even more than it did. China also became, by a fraction, the world’s largest exporter. Meanwhile, the BRICs are also increasing their trade with one another: Chinese-Indian trade has soared and is likely to reach $60 billion this year. China has also become the largest market for the fast-industrialising countries of East Asia. Less happily, China has become the largest spewer-forth of carbon dioxide, emitting 6.5 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2008, or 22% of the world’s total. Russia is third and India fourth on this particular roll of shame.

The most striking sign of the BRICs’ significance to the world economy, though, is probably their share of foreign-exchange reserves. All four are among the ten largest accumulators of reserves, accounting for 40% of the world’s total. China is easily the largest, with a staggering $2.4 trillion, enough to buy two-thirds of all the NASDAQ-quoted companies. It is the world’s second-largest net creditor after Japan (the net credit position takes account of equities as well as debt). Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves were virtually zero when it began market reform in 1992; now they stand at $420 billion. If the BRICs were to set aside one-sixth of their reserves, they could create a fund the size of the IMF.

Foreign assets provided cushions against the great recession and helped turn the BRICs into financial powers as well as economic ones. Even as most Western countries struggle to rein in record budget deficits and soaring debts, the BRICs’ public-debt levels are mostly modest and stable (India is a partial exception). Most investment banks offer BRIC funds. The world’s top two banks are Chinese.

This macro performance is being translated into different sorts of influence. Perhaps the most important is an intangible one: that of reputation. In some respects, the BRICs share a distinctive view of the world. They have large domestic markets with substantial numbers of poor people, so growth and anti-poverty programmes are higher up their list of concerns than in Western countries (this is even true in Russia, though to a lesser extent). They are trying to diversify their economies. They are innovating (though Russia is much better at producing guns than civilian goods) and challenging received notions about globalisation (see our special report). All have become far more entwined with the world economy. But the BRICs have opened up without the full market liberalisation championed by the “Washington consensus”. In the aftermath of the great recession, this mongrel position commands respect in other developing countries, which want to know how the BRICs did it. “The BRICs aren’t exactly an alternative to the Washington consensus,” says Mathias Spektor of the Getúlio Vargas foundation in Brazil, “but they provide other models to emulate and are effective at expressing something distinctive in economic affairs.”

An acronym in search of a role
Wealth may produce market power and even soft power. But it does not necessarily generate geopolitical heft. Rich Japan and Germany deliberately adopted a “big Switzerland” policy of hiding their light under a bushel for decades. Even now, they throw their weight about reluctantly.

But there are several reasons for thinking that the BRICs might be different. Germany and Japan had a golf-sized American security umbrella for shelter. But international institutions are now in flux. Robert Hormats, America’s under-secretary of state for economic affairs, compares the 2010s to the late 1940s: “The post-war period was so different from the pre-war one that it needed new institutions. The turn of the 21st century is similar, especially after the financial crisis.” He argues that “you can’t go back to having the system run by a few rich economies. Our big challenge is to work out how large emerging economies integral to the financial and trading system take some responsibility for maintaining it.”

One reason the BRICs matter is that the world’s most important country thinks they do, and is willing to rope them into decision-making. America’s means of doing this is the G20. It pushed for the group’s expansion to include the BRICs and declared the club the chief forum for dealing with international economic issues. The BRICs and the original group of seven rich countries (G7) form natural blocks within the G20. So far, the clearest expression of a coherent BRIC agenda—for reform of the international financial system and more domestic stimulus programmes—came on the eve of a G20 meeting in 2008.

A second reason why the BRICs matter is that all four giants have reasons for creating a new club of their own. China’s leaders know their time has come. They want to enhance their own influence and reduce America’s. But at the same time their leaders hew to Deng Xiaoping’s dictum that “China should adopt a low profile and never take the lead.”

The BRICs, which the Chinese calls jinzhuan siguo, or four golden brick nations, are a way to square that circle. By teaming up with others (which are anyway attractive as raw-materials suppliers), China can hide its national demands behind a multilateral façade. And a meeting of the BRICs looks slightly more like a collection of equals than do most gatherings involving China (though China’s economy is still larger than those of the other three combined). China sees climate-change diplomacy as a way of boosting its soft power, and as part of its bilateral relationship with America (its stubborn behaviour in Copenhagen notwithstanding). But it does not want to break with the rest of the developing world on climate issues. Co-ordination with other “emerging” polluters helps it to succeed on all these fronts.

This balancing act applies to the other BRICs. All want to soften the impact of China’s rise. The BRIC forum is an alternative to what they all (perhaps even China itself) regard as a nightmare: a G2 of America and China. They all also want, in the words of Brazil’s foreign minister, “to increase, if only at the margin, the degree of multipolarity in the world”.

India has been profoundly disappointed by traditional multilateral diplomacy. Years of pushing for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council have got it nowhere. The BRICs can hardly be worse. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been trying to expand Brazil’s diplomatic influence beyond Latin America. The BRICs help him fulfil these geopolitical ambitions. (Whether Lula’s successors will share his taste for the world stage is an open question: at the moment, both likely successors seem more concerned about domestic matters.) As for Russia, association with some of the most dynamic economies in the world may perhaps divert some attention away from its own decline. More important for Russia, as for all the others, the BRICs are a way of telling America that the largest developing countries have their own options and that not all roads lead to Washington.

Because of this, some members of America’s Congress look on the BRICs with trepidation. The main focus of their concern is China’s currency. But there are other reasons why the BRICs might damage the global economic system, rather than buttress it. They might, for example, undermine the role of the IMF and World Bank, abandon attempts to expand free trade or even just ride roughshod over aid conditions in poor countries. But Mr Hormats thinks they will not. “They understand,” he argues, “that the openness and smooth functioning of the system is vital to them and so far there has been very little evidence that they want to change it dramatically.” When world output was plummeting last year, the BRICs’ economic stimulus programmes did a lot to stabilise it. And on the question of reforming the international financial institutions, America and the BRICs find themselves on the same side.

Without straw
A more compelling reason for doubting the BRICs’ chances of changing anything fundamental is that they are not capable of it. They lack coherence. They compete as much among themselves as they do with America or Europe—and hence the BRICs as a club seem unlikely to match the force of their individual ambitions.

Two are authoritarian; two are noisy democracies. Three are nuclear powers. Brazil is not, though it had a nuclear-weapons programme which it abandoned in the 1980s; in 2009 the vice-president said he personally thought Brazil should build its own bomb and the country plans a nuclear-powered submarine to patrol offshore oilfields. Two have permanent seats on the UN Security Council; two (to their immense frustration) do not.

When Mr O’Neill first coined his term, people wondered why Brazil was in the group but not Mexico. Now Russia looks like the odd man out. Its population is falling. Its fertility rate is catastrophically low, at around 1.35, compared with 1.8-2.8 for the others (the fertility rate measures the number of children an average woman can expect to have during her lifetime). The working-age populations of India, China and Brazil will all rise between now and 2030 (enormously in India and Brazil, marginally in China). Russia’s working-age population will fall by 17m. In general, uncertainty about who belongs in the group casts doubt on its coherence. Should South Africa join? Mexico? Indonesia? If they did, what would happen to the group?

A more important obstacle to coherence is strategic rivalry. True, BRIC countries co-operate on a bilateral basis. There have been joint military exercises between Russia and China, Russia and India, and China and India in recent years. Russia and China also have a mutual-security body, called the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which includes Central Asian countries. The big problem, though, is India’s rivalry with China.

China and India fought a war in 1962. China has taken control of a slice of Kashmir which India says was ceded illegally by Pakistan. China also disputes India’s title to the state of Arunachal Pradesh. In 2009 it tried to stop the Asian Development Bank from lending money to India because the loans would have financed a flood-control project there. India has been trying to limit the numbers of skilled Chinese workers. Some Indians fear that China wants to strangle their country with a “string of pearls”: the imagined necklace consists of Pakistan, India’s longtime rival; Nepal, where China backs the Maoist opposition; and Sri Lanka, where it is financing the country’s big post-civil-war reconstruction projects.
(Flash on groups)
The BRICs have also stepped up competition between one another in third countries. Although the flow of aid and investment from rich countries to poor has been faltering, China promised $10 billion of cheap credit to Africa in 2009-12 and Brazil has invested $10 billion in the continent since 2003. The BRICs have also dramatically increased their purchases of exports from poor countries. Rather as America and the Soviet Union vied for influence through economic and military aid, the BRICs do now (though their competition is less fierce than the cold-war version).

Even where BRIC countries agree in general, they often disagree in detail. Climate change is a good example. The emerging giants all argue that Western industrialised nations should take the largest share of the burden of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions. They criticise absolute emission caps for developing countries and argue for limits based on population or intensity of use. They all want to keep questions of trade and climate change separate, opposing things like carbon duties.

However, for the purposes of climate change, the BRICs are actually BASICs (Brazil, South Africa, India, China): Russia is an industrialised country under the Kyoto accords, with obligations the others do not have. Even on a specific matter such as forestry, their records differ. Brazil is the world’s biggest deforester, albeit one committed to slowing the pace; China is the world’s biggest afforester (now planting 4m hectares of forest a year)—though some complain that its trading partners’ trees are being felled to stoke its economic growth.

Lastly, the BRICs differ economically. Obviously, their incomes range widely, from Russia’s $15,000 per head per year to India’s $3,000 (these are IMF figures using purchasing-power parities). Brazil and India define themselves as non-aligned developing economies. Russia does not. China sometimes does, and sometimes thinks of itself as sui generis. China and Russia have more open economies, with exports accounting for around a third of GDP. India and Brazil are more closed, with exports less than a fifth of GDP. Perhaps most important, China and Russia are both running huge current-account surpluses; Brazil and India, small current-account deficits. That reflects fundamentally different approaches to economic management. China is suppressing domestic demand and encouraging jobs in export industries. India and Brazil look askance at this form of mercantilism and suffer from China’s resulting currency undervaluation.

Marriages of inconvenience
The BRICs’ divisions do not paralyse the group. The countries got together to propose reforming the IMF, for instance. But they do limit the block’s effectiveness. There is no sign of military co-operation within the organisation, and nothing much on trade. As Mr Spektor puts it, the BRICs merely have to be something, not do anything.

Paradoxically, this makes it easier for the group to flourish since co-operation within the BRICs is in essence free: no one need sacrifice anything, so, however tiny the potential gains, they are worth pursuing. Emerging giants are able to criticise the management of the world economy without having to do anything about it (for example, deploring the failure to complete the Doha round of world trade talks without offering to break the logjam). As Agata Antkiewicz of the Centre for International Governance Innovation puts it, “even though the BRICs group has always been incoherent, the tag seems to have permeated the public domain and become synonymous with change, emerging markets and growth.” But this could end if ever BRIC membership required trade-offs.

Meanwhile, the BRICs face rivals. East Asian countries are cobbling together something that might one day become a coherent emerging-market group. In January a free-trade agreement linking China and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) came into force. In March ASEAN nations, China, Japan and South Korea set up a pool of foreign-exchange reserves giving them a small element of monetary-policy co-ordination. Such a group leaves out Brazil, Russia and India. But Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think-tank in Washington, DC, reckons the West ought to be thinking about how to respond to this regional group, rather than the global club of BRICs.

Eswar Prasad of Cornell University points out that as an organisation (as opposed to a clever acronym), the BRICs are a product of the great recession. They are noticed because of the recessionary debate about rebalancing the world economy. As that debate evolves, so will ideas about the BRICs. But that is no reason for writing them off. There have also been endless numbers of Gs: starting in the 1960s with a G10, then G5, G6, G7, G8 — and now G20.

The BRICs cannot claim legal, historical or geographical coherence, in the way the European Union can. They are not facing a common security threat, as NATO originally did. But events in Copenhagen, messy as they were, are surely proof that new and improbable combinations of large, emerging countries can play a role on the world stage. The BRICs’ begetter, Mr O’Neill, does not regret his creation: his “overriding conclusion is that [they] are a good mechanism for pressing rich countries to change their role in managing the global economy more radically.”

Biblioteca Digital Mundial - www.wdl.org

BIBLIOTECA DIGITAL MUNDIAL UNESCO
site www.wdl.org

Reúne mapas, textos, fotos, gravações e filmes de todos os tempos e explica em sete idiomas as jóias e relíquias culturais de todas as bibliotecas do planeta.

A BDM não oferecerá documentos atuais, apenas aqueles com valor patrimonial, que permitam apreciar e conhecer melhor as culturas do mundo em nos seguintes idiomas: árabe, chinês, inglês, francês, russo, espanhol e português.
Há documentos online em mais de 50 idiomas.
Entre os documentos mais antigos, há alguns manuscritos pré-colombianos, graças a contribuição do México, e os primeiros mapas da América, desenhados por Diego Gutiérrez para o rei da Espanha em 1562,
Os tesouros incluem o Hyrakumanto darani, um documento japonês publicado no ano de 764, considerado o primeiro texto impresso da história; trabalhos de árabes científicos desvendando o mistério da álgebra; ossos utilizados como oráculos e estelas chinesas; a Bíblia de Gutenberg; antigas fotos latino-americanas da Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil e da célebre Bíblia do Diabo, do século XIII, da Biblioteca Nacional da Suécia.
Cada jóia cultura universal aparece acompanhada de uma breve explicação de seu conteúdo e significado. Os documentos foram escaneados e incorporados em seu idioma original, mas as explicações aparecem em sete línguas, entre elas o Português.

A biblioteca começa com 1200 documentos, mas foi desenvolvida para receber um número ilimitado de textos, gravuras, mapas, fotografias e ilustrações.
A BDM permite ao internauta orientar sua busca por épocas, lugares geográficos, tipos de documentos e instituições. Como os documentos foram escaneados em seu idioma original é possível, por exemplo, estudar em detalhe o Evangelho de São Mateus traduzido em aleutiano pelo missionário russo Loann Veniamiov, em 1840.
Com um simples clique, podem-se folhear as páginas de um livro, aproximar e distanciar o texto e movê-lo em todos os sentidos. A excelente qualidade das imagens permite uma leitura cômoda e minuciosa.

Entre as jóias contidas na BDM, está a Declaração da Independência dos Estados Unidos, assim como as Constituições de vários países; o diário de um estudioso de Veneza que acompanhou Fernando de Magalhães em sua viagem ao redor do mundo; o original das Fábulas de La Fontaine, o primeiro livro em espanhol e tagalog, publicado nas Filipinas, a Bíblia de Gutenberg, e umas pinturas rupestres africanas, datadas de 8.000 A.C.

Duas regiões do mundo estão particularmente bem representadas:
America Latina e Oriente Médio: Isso se deve à participação ativa da Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil, da Biblioteca Alexandrina do Egito e da Universidade Rei Abdala da Arábia Saudita.
A estrutura da BDM foi calcada no projeto de digitalização da Biblioteca do Congresso dos Estados Unidos, que começou em 1991 e atualmente contém 11 milhões de documentos online.

Criticas à politica externa brasileira - Celso Lafer

Diplomacia brasileira, novas variações críticas
Celso Lafer
O Estado de S.Paulo, domingo, 20 de junho de 2010

A política externa do governo Lula tem sido objeto de crescentes críticas. São muitos os rumos que vêm sendo questionados. No plano mais geral, aponta-se que o Itamaraty não tem escolhido os campos de atuação que oferecem ao nosso país, que alcançou um novo patamar internacional em função das transformações internas iniciadas com a redemocratização, as melhores oportunidades para se beneficiar da nova multipolaridade do cenário mundial.

É o caso da prioridade dada à busca de um reconhecimento protagônico na esfera da alta política da paz e da guerra no Oriente Médio (Irã), em detrimento da ênfase em resultados mais significativos em áreas mais próximas da influência real do Brasil. As tensões do contexto da nossa vizinhança (a animosidade Colômbia-Venezuela) e as que afetam nossas fronteiras e a vida nacional (trânsito de drogas da Bolívia) são minimizadas no dia a dia da condução diplomática. Interesses específicos do País e os seus interesses gerais, na boa dinâmica de funcionamento da ordem mundial, em síntese, não vêm sendo articulados de maneira eficiente em razão da obsessiva prevalência atribuída à paixão pelo prestígio.

Em contraste com as paixões, interesses são aspirações que levam em conta uma raciocinada avaliação do como efetivá-las. O como é fundamental, pois a realidade oferece resistência a aspirações que são apenas desejos. Daí a importância do bom juízo diplomático, que conjuga, com criatividade, o que se quer com o que se pode. É precisamente um exemplificativo rol de inadequados juízos diplomáticos do governo Lula o que listo a seguir.

As difíceis negociações na OMC não foram acompanhadas por concomitante interesse em buscar acordos comerciais regionais ou bilaterais propiciadores de acesso a mercados para os produtos brasileiros que carecem de preferências no continente e no mundo. A diluição crescente do significado econômico e político do projeto Mercosul não só está sendo passivamente aceita, mas viu-se agravada pelo empenho governamental em incorporar a Venezuela de Hugo Chávez, cuja visão de integração é apenas a de juntar forças para se opor aos EUA.

Sólidas iniciativas do governo FHC, como a Irsa, direcionadas para projetos de integração de infraestrutura regional sul-americana, ficam na penumbra e destaque é dado à criação de inócuos foros novos, como a União Sul Americana de Nações (Unasul). O Tratado de Cooperação da Amazônia, que reúne todos os países da Bacia Amazônica e poderia impulsionar a cooperação regional voltada para a preservação sustentável do bioma amazônico e, assim, contribuir para o encaminhamento de um dos grandes itens da agenda ambiental, dorme nos escaninhos do Itamaraty.

O benevolente endosso à violência e à fraude do processo eleitoral no Irã contrapõe-se à "birra" (na terminologia do presidente) na intransigente defesa de Zelaya, dificultando o equacionamento da questão democrática em Honduras. É patente a incoerência com que se invoca o princípio da não-intervenção para favorecer a omissão quanto aos riscos para a democracia e os direitos humanos provenientes da atuação do presidente Chávez na Venezuela e o seu ostensivo desrespeito para benefício eleitoral do presidente Evo Morales na Bolívia.

É lamentável a insensibilidade em relação a valores com que a repressão do governo cubano a dissidentes em greve de fome foi desqualificada pelo presidente como uma ação de criminosos comuns. É um desrespeito ao princípio constitucional da prevalência dos direitos humanos nas relações internacionais do Brasil a omissão perante o genocídio em Darfur.

É altamente discutível se o princípio constitucional da eficiência da administração pública se vê atendido seja pela indiscriminada abertura de novas embaixadas e de consulados-gerais (mais de 40), seja pela exagerada ampliação das vagas de ingresso na carreira, que compromete o padrão de qualidade da formação profissional dos quadros diplomáticos.

O princípio constitucional da impessoalidade da administração pública é continuamente posto em questão pela sofreguidão com que os responsáveis pela diplomacia brasileira se dedicam a glorificar o impacto da presença do chefe de Estado no cenário mundial. Essa celebração do prestígio do presidente aponta para um personalismo populista que impede a construção de um consenso mínimo em torno da política externa como uma política pública de interesse nacional.

A partidarização da política externa, com seu viés ideológico, tem sido um caminho para obscurecer e colocar em segundo plano a sua dimensão de política de Estado que, levando em conta os fatores da persistência da inserção internacional do Brasil, contribui para assegurar a previsibilidade e a confiabilidade externa do País. Observo que para a contundência crítica à política externa do atual governo muito tem cooperado a postura partidária dos seus responsáveis, que, sem base histórica, configuram a presidência Lula como o marco zero da diplomacia brasileira. Quem semeia os ventos da desqualificação colhe as tempestades do dissenso.

Em síntese, o que os críticos da política externa do governo Lula apontam é que a diplomacia brasileira está optando pelo inefável do prestígio em detrimento da realidade dos resultados. Por isso não vem traduzindo apropriadamente necessidades internas em possibilidades externas; não identifica corretamente as prioridades nacionais a serem defendidas no plano internacional; não escolhe com discernimento nem os campos de atuação nos quais o Brasil pode colher os melhores frutos para a efetiva defesa dos seus reais interesses nem os parceiros mais compatíveis com o progresso democrático interno; desconsidera valores e, deste modo, descapitaliza o legado do soft power do nosso país.

É a expressão intransitiva da "glória de mandar", "desta vaidade a quem chamamos Fama", para concluir com Camões.

Professor titular da Faculdade de Direito da USP, membro da Academia Brasileira de Ciências e da Academia Brasileira de Letras, foi Ministro das Relações Exteriores (governo FHC).

Coreia do Norte no Mundial: ah, esses atores chineses

Confesso que eu também fiquei surpreso ao ver o "enorme" número de norte-coreanos torcendo pelo seu time na partida contra o Brasil: por "enorme" eu quero dizer mais de vinte, talvez uns 50, quem sabe até um pouco mais, na focalização rápida da câmera não deu para contar...
Mas, eu bem que pensei: turistas eles não são, pois isso não existe na Coréia do Norte, pelo menos não para outra parte do mundo que não a própria Coreia do Norte (de preferência para a aldeia de nascimento do grandioso líder, pai da pátria, Kim Il-Sung, para a escola em que ele estudou, para a cabana na qual ele se escondeu para fugir dos japoneses, quando aos 10 anos já estava manifestando contra os colonialistas nipônicos, enfim, para o seu mausoléu grandioso, no coração da vibrante capital Pyongyang).
Realmente não sabia precisar, até que está matéria do The Huffington Post esclareceu tudo.
O caro líder, filho do amado líder, pagou para uma tropa de atores chineses falsificarem uma tropa de torcedores da Coréia do Norte. Acho que se trata de um bom arranjo: os chineses assistem aos jogos da Copa tudo pago, e ainda aproveitam para conhecer um pouco outro país. Não sei se eles aprenderam coreano, o que eu duvido, mas isso o resto do mundo talvez nem perceba....
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

North Korean Fans Are Chinese Actors PAID To Cheer World Cup Team (VIDEO)
Hunter Stuart
The Huffington Post, June 16, 2010

If you watched North Korea play a hard-fought game against Brazil in the World Cup on Tuesday, you may have wondered how all those North Korean fans were able to attend the game given the nation's dire economic condition and dictator Kim Jong Il's strict prohibitions on leaving the country.

Commentator Martin Tyler (in the video) answered your question:

We are told that the supporters of North Korea aren't North Koreans--they're handpicked actors from China who have been sent here to act out the part of North Korean fans. I haven't found one I can speak to, who can speak back to me to tell me whether that's the case--I doubt he'd tell me the truth if that is the case.

Although the news has been circling the Internet for a month, AOL's Fanhouse brought to our attention yesterday that North Korea provided 1,000 tickets to a group of Chinese fans, including actors and musicians, to fly to South Africa for the game.

China, who is one of North Korea's closest allies in the world, failed to qualify for this year's World Cup. North Korea hasn't played in the tournament since 1966.

Turquia islamista: nossos novos aliados no apoio ao Iran

O artigo abaixo, do conhecido articulista e "free columnist" do NYTimes, Tom Friedman, deve ser lido na imediata sequencia de sua primeira carta de Istambul, que reproduzi aqui neste post:

A Turquia se coloca fora da UE, voluntariamente

O jornalista examina o distanciamento turco das agendas europeia e americana, em direção de uma agenda mais islamista, o que pode até parecer "normal", sendo ela um país majoritariamente islâmico -- mas um Estado laico -- e dirigida por um partido islamista, embora relativamente moderado, o que pode ter sido uma posição tática, até aqui, para impulsionar lentamente a sua causa.
Pode até fazer sentido, para um país islâmico da região, se aproximar do Irã. Não sei se faz, no caso brasileiro. Em todo caso, somos íntimos amigos dos turcos agora, e não sei, sinceramente, quão íntimos dos iranianos.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Op-Ed Columnist
Letter From Istanbul, Part 2
By Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times, June 18, 2010

I leave Istanbul with four questions that Turks asked me echoing in my head. Forget the answers, just these questions will tell you all you need to understand the situation here. The four questions, which were asked of me by different Turkish journalists, academics or businessmen, can be summarized as follows:

One: Do you think we are seeing the death of the West and the rise of new world powers in the East? Two: Tom, it was great talking to you this morning, but would you mind not quoting me by name? I’m afraid the government will retaliate against me, my newspaper or my business if you do. Three: Is it true, as Prime Minister Erdogan believes, that Israel is behind the attacks by the Kurdish terrorist group P.K.K. on Turkey? Four: Do you really think Obama can punish Turkey for voting against the U.S. at the U.N. on Iran sanctions? After all, America needs Turkey more than Turkey needs America.

The question about the death of the West is really about the rise of Turkey, which is actually a wonderful story. The Turks wanted to get into the European Union and were rebuffed, but I’m not sure Turkish businessmen even care today. The E.U. feels dead next to Turkey, which last year was right behind India and China among the fastest-growing economies in the world — just under 7 percent — and was the fastest-growing economy in Europe.

Americans have tended to look at Turkey as a bridge or a base — either a cultural bridge that connects the West and the Muslim world, or as our base (Incirlik Air Base) that serves as the main U.S. supply hub for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Turks see themselves differently.

“Turkey is not a bridge. It’s a center,” explained Muzaffer Senel, an international relations researcher at Istanbul Sehir University.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey has become the center of its own economic space, stretching from southern Russia, all through the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and down through Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Middle East. All you have to do is stand in the Istanbul airport and look at the departures board for Turkish Airlines, which flies to cities half of which I cannot even pronounce, to appreciate what a pulsating economic center this has become for Central Asia. I met Turkish businessmen who were running hotel chains in Moscow, banks in Bosnia and Greece, road-building projects in Iraq and huge trading operations with Iran and Syria. In 1980, Turkey’s total exports were worth $3 billion. In 2008, they were $132 billion. There are now 250 industrial zones throughout Anatolia. Turkey’s cellphone users have gone from virtually none in the 1990s to 64 million in 2008.

So Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees himself as the leader of a rising economic powerhouse of 70 million people who is entitled to play an independent geopolitical role — hence his U.N. vote against sanctioning Iran. But how Turkey rises really matters — and Erdogan definitely has some troubling Hugo Chávez-Vladimir Putin tendencies. I’ve never visited a democracy where more people whom I interviewed asked me not to quote them by name for fear of retribution by Erdogan’s circle — in the form of lawsuits, tax investigations or being shut out of government contracts. The media here is rampantly self-censored.

Moreover, Erdogan has evolved from just railing against Israel’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza to spouting conspiracy theories — like the insane notion that Israel is backing the P.K.K. terrorists — as a way of consolidating his political base among conservative Muslims in Turkey and abroad.

Is there anything the U.S. can do? My advice: Avoid a public confrontation that Erdogan can exploit to build more support, draw U.S. redlines in private and let Turkish democrats take the lead. Turkey is full of energy and hormones, and is trying to figure out its new identity. There is an inner struggle over that identity, between those who would like to see Turkey more aligned with the Islamic world and values and those who want it to remain more secular, Western and pluralistic. Who defines Turkey will determine a lot about whether we end up in a war of civilizations. We need to be involved but proceed delicately.

This struggle is for Turks, and they are on it. Only two weeks before the Gaza flotilla incident, a leading poll showed Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., trailing his main opposition — the secularist Republican People’s Party — for the first time since the A.K.P. came to office in 2002.

That is surely one reason Erdogan openly took sides with one of the most radical forces in the region, Hamas — to re-energize his political base. But did he overplay his hand? Up to now, Erdogan has been very cunning, treating his opponents like frogs in a pail, always just gradually turning up the heat so they never quite knew they were boiling. But now they know. The secular and moderate Muslim forces in Turkey are alarmed; the moderate Arab regimes are alarmed; the Americans are alarmed. The fight for Turkey’s soul is about to be joined in a much more vigorous way.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on June 20, 2010, on page WK8 of the New York edition.